Researchers saw promising results in tests for a new mRNA-based vaccine to treat an aggressive form of brain cancer, with the treatment helping dogs as well as humans in early trials, IFL Science reports. The process extracts mRNA from the patient’s tumor and manipulates it to spur that patient’s immune system to attack the cancer cells after it’s reinjected.
The tests have shown promise in human patients as well as dogs in the clinical test, but these aren’t typical animal testing. Because dogs, like humans, are one of the rare animal species known to develop spontaneous brain tumors, the treatment was tested on ten dogs recently diagnosed with cancer tumors in their brains that were volunteered by their owners.
It was a rare case of animal drug testing benefiting the animal patient as well. While dogs had a typical 30 to 60 day lifespan after diagnosis of the cancer, dogs treated with the mRNA vaccine lived for a median 139 days. “The demonstration that making an mRNA cancer vaccine in this fashion generates similar and strong responses across mice, pet dogs that have developed cancer spontaneously and human patients with brain cancer is a really important finding, because oftentimes we don’t know how well the preclinical studies in animals are going to translate into similar responses in patients,” said study co-author Dr. Duane Mitchell.